2 Peter 3.18
But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen.
Growing in grace and knowledge is more, so much more, than expanding your biblical knowledge database.
Part of what puts us on this “knowledge detour” is the fact that God’s words are so powerful that even tapping this tremendous resource at only the information level can be pretty exciting. Think about it, after all these are God’s eternal words.
But to follow Christ, to grow in his grace and knowledge, we must take the interactive approach.
God’s words are to live more than just in our minds. Intellectual fancy and obsession with truth, even God’s truth, can be nothing more than our confused pursuit of goodness apart from God.
“It’s alive! It’s alive!” (per the Capital One commercial per the 1931 classic, Frankenstein)
God’s words are alive and are meant to live in us. To grow in grace and knowledge, we must follow Jesus Christ on the path. We must live the words.
Just as God tells us.
Jesus answered, It is written: Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4.4 NIV).
So I will say it out loud. Bible study can be deceptive and dangerous if we wrongly handle the “God words.”
Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth (2 Timothy 2.15 NIV).
Can we see that correctly handling, or “rightly dividing” the word of truth involves our entire approach to the words of God? We must take nothing for granted, pushing our assumptions aside, trembling before his words, and asking him how and where to start and continue the journey.
Jeremiah 5.22, 24a ESV
Do you not fear me? declares the Lord.
Do you not tremble before me?
I placed the sand as the boundary for the sea, a perpetual barrier that it cannot pass; though the waves toss, they cannot prevail; though they roar, they cannot pass over it.
They do not say in their hearts, “Let us fear the Lord our God. . .
So what are we really saying in our hearts when we approach God through his words?
